Open Letter to Obama from Central and Eastern Europe with Open Blog Quiz

My Hungarian blogger pal emailed me a link to to the July 16 open letter to Barack Obama in the Warsaw Gazette from Central and Eastern European 'statesmen.'

Well, I stopped at that point and realized I only knew two of these folks. I didn't know if they were all statesmen, or men even. So I looked them up. And linked them all and gave you a very brief idea of who they are. The labels hardly tell the story. For those of you as ignorant as I of Eastern European politics, I'd urge you to at least look at the links of any two of your choice. It's pathetic that many of us Americans know more about each of Sarah Palin's children than we know about the people on this list.


Rough Overview of the letter

Basically, the letter is a call for the US to not forget Central and Eastern Europe because of other more pressing matters like Iraq and Afghanistan. Things in CE Europe are changing and the democratic governments should not be taken for granted. New leaders don't remember how the US helped us gain our freedom. As the economy goes bad, many are becoming nationalistic. Russia is not as respectful of our new sovereignty as we would like. We write in the interest of the US as well as our own. And here are six steps we think would help.



I've got a few excerpts after the list of signers of the letter. This exercise also reminded me that an hour or so of googling can turn on some dim lights in an area that had been pretty much dark in my brain. While it may seem that there is too much to learn, so why bother, I know that we can be aware of much, much more than we are. Without that much work.

Do read through the names and brief descriptions slowly and attentively. Turn on some mental lights of your own. At least slow enough to be able, afterward, (yes a quiz) to write down:

• how many women are on the list? (most probably won't be able to tell from the names alone and will have to check links - there are pictures in all I believe)
  
  
• what are the countries represented?

And if you don't know where they are, here is a map of Central and Eastern Europe.

• Which countries are not represented?

The Signers

1. Valdas Adamkus [President of the Republic of Lithuania],
2. Martin Butora [Slovak sociologist, politician and former ambassador to US],
3. Emil Constantinescu [President of Romania from 1996 to 2000],
4. Pavol Demes [Director for Central and Eastern Europe of the German Marshall Fund of the United States since January 2000 and former Slovak Minister of Foreign Affairs],
5. Lubos Dobrovsky [Journalist, former Czech ambassador to Moscow,
6. Matyas Eorsi [Hungarian lawyer, politician, and candidate for Secretary General of the Council of Europe],
7. Istvan Gyarmati [currently President and CEO, International Centre for Democratic Transition in Budapest],
8. Vaclav Havel [Writer and Dramatist; One of the first Spokesmen for Charter 77; Leading Figure of the Velvet Revolution of 1989; Last President of Czechoslovakia; and First President of the Czech Republic],
9. Rastislav Kacer [lobbyist?, former Slovak ambassador to US],
10. Sandra Kalniete [Latvian member of the European Parliament],
11. Karel Schwarzenberg [Czech Minister - link goes to one of the only non-official sites here and gives more than the official image],
12. Michal Kovac [ first President of the Slovak Republic],
13. Ivan Krastev [Director, Center for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, Bulgaria],
14. Alexander Kwasniewski [former two term president of Poland, now faculty Georgetown University],
15. Mart Laar [former Prime Minister of Estonia],
16. Kadri Liik [Estonian journalist?, Director of the International Centre for Defence Studies],
17. Janos Martonyi[former Foreign Minister of Hungry].
    
18. Janusz Onyszkiewicz [Polish mathematician, alpinist, politician and a vice-president of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee (since January 2007)],
19. Adam Rotfeld [polish diplomat and researcher],
20. Vaira Vike-Freiberga [Professor Emeritus Montreal University and former President of Latvia],
21. Alexandr Vondra [Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs of the Czech Republic],
22. Lech Walesa [Polish co-founder of Solidarity, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and former President.]

Excerpts:

Leadership change is also coming in Central and Eastern Europe. Next to those, there are fewer and fewer leaders who emerged from the revolutions of 1989 who experienced Washington's key role in securing our democratic transition and anchoring our countries in NATO and EU. A new generation of leaders is emerging who do not have these memories and follow a more "realistic" policy. At the same time, the former Communist elites, whose insistence on political and economic power significantly contributed to the crises in many CEE countries, gradually disappear from the political scene. The current political and economic turmoil and the fallout from the global economic crisis provide additional opportunities for the forces of nationalism, extremism, populism, and anti-Semitism across the continent but also in some our countries. . .

Our hopes that relations with Russia would improve and that Moscow would finally fully accept our complete sovereignty and independence after joining NATO and the EU have not been fulfilled. Instead, Russia is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods. At a global level, Russia has become, on most issues, a status-quo power. But at a regional level and vis-a-vis our nations, it increasingly acts as a revisionist one. It challenges our claims to our own historical experiences. It asserts a privileged position in determining our security choices. It uses overt and covert means of economic warfare, ranging from energy blockades and politically motivated investments to bribery and media manipulation in order to advance its interests and to challenge the transatlantic orientation of Central and Eastern Europe. . .

Six steps they recommend:

Therefore, we propose the following steps: [I've just given excerpts. You can get the whole letter at the Warsaw Gazette.]

First, we are convinced that America needs Europe and that Europe needs the United States as much today as in the past. The United States should reaffirm its vocation as a European power and make clear that it plans to stay fully engaged on the continent even while it faces the pressing challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the wider Middle East, and Asia. For our part we must work at home in our own countries and in Europe more generally to convince our leaders and societies to adopt a more global perspective and be prepared to shoulder more responsibility in partnership with the United States.

Second, we need a renaissance of NATO as the most important security link between the United States and Europe. . .


Third, the thorniest issue may well be America's planned missile-defense installations. Here too, there are different views in the region, including among our publics which are divided. . .

Fourth, we know that NATO alone is not enough. We also want and need more Europe and a better and more strategic U.S.-EU relationship as well. . .

Fifth is energy security. The threat to energy supplies can exert an immediate influence on our nations' political sovereignty also as allies contributing to common decisions in NATO. . . .

Sixth, we must not neglect the human factor. Our next generations need to get to know each other, too. We have to cherish and protect the multitude of educational, professional, and other networks and friendships that underpin our friendship and alliance. . .

While left and right don't quite mean the same in these countries as here, I would say that a number of the people on this list would probably be seen as conservative in the US. Not sure about them all. KS, if you're checking your email at all in Hawaii, can you give us your take on what this means?

And thanks, Ropi for pointing this out. Since I unfortunately did not take your movie advice, I thought I'd better take your Central European politics advice.

And our first house guest arrived safe and sound from Beijing.

Time to Plan Your Trip to Thailand - Tourism Drops 22%

Thaivisa citing the Bangkok Post reports:

The tourism industry has hit a 49-year low and is expected to plunge by 22 per cent this year, according to the Tourism Council of Thailand.

With the airport shut down last year, more violent demonstrations this year, and H1N1 rates among the highest in Asia, it's no wonder that tourists are avoiding Thailand.

But lowest in 49 years? There were no tourists 49 years ago. When I went to Phuket in 1969, there were only a couple of two story Thai hotels downtown. The Erawan Hotel, now a gazillion story super hotel in the middle of Bangkok traffic, was a delightfully sleepy, but elegant, two story hotel with a wonderful lunch by the pool.

OK, there were some tourists back then, but I saw more tourists in my three months in Chiang Mai this year than I did in three years in Thailand in the '60s. Even if they count the US soldiers on R&R from Vietnam as tourists.


It just couldn't be right, so I checked the Bangkok Post article:

The tourism industry has suffered its deepest slump in many decades with the number of visitors expected to be down 22 per cent on last year, according to the Tourism Council of Thailand chairman Kongkit Hiranyakij.

It was the biggest plunge in tourism growth in 49 years, he said.

Now that's a totally different story. "Biggest drop in tourism growth" is a lot different from 'tourism hits 49 year low."

See how misinformation starts to flow?

In any case, there will be a lot of empty hotel rooms which means a lot of great rates. Time to check on line or with your travel agent.

I Should Have Listened to Ropi Who Didn't Like Public Enemies

Ropi posted this Saturday:

I watched a movie called Public Enemies as I mentioned in my last post. I do not know why girls in love with Johnny Depp. He isn't that great. . .

The movie was a bit boring. It was the alternation of long shooting scenes and boring nothing. It was totally outrageous when the bank robber went to the police station and asked one of the officers about a sport event.

Ropi and I have some things in common, such as blogging. Although we read each other's blogs regularly, we don't agree on many things. So when he wasn't impressed with Johnny Depp, it gave him less credibility as a movie reviewer for me.

But I should have listened. He was even right about Depp. What a waste of money, of talent, of time. It was like seeing the John Dillinger template from Powerpoint (if they had one.) All form, no content. The script was pedestrian, the characters had no depth at all, none of them. The cinematography was routine. They used up lots of fake blood, lots of machine gun blanks. I kept looking at my wife and mouthing, why are we here?

So, Ropi, how much did it cost to see this in Budapest? In Anchorage, at the newest and slickest theater in town, the regular cost would be $9.75, but we got Senior Monday tickets for $6.00 each. Here's the whole price list:


Adult Evening $9.75

Adult Fri/Sat after 6pm
(*Price also applies to Special Advance Showings) $10.00

Child (1-11) /Senior (62+) $6.50

Adult Matinee before 6pm
(Sat/Sun/Holidays before 2pm) $6.75

Early Bird First Matinee Showtime (7 days a week).
Note: Check below for multiple listings of a movie (i.e. Digital, Regular, 3D, etc.) to find first showtime. $6.00

Seniors Day - All Day Monday $6.00

Military $7.50

3D Attraction - Normal Ticket Price Plus Premium $2.25

Preparing for Summer Visitors

When I had sabbatical in 2003-2004 we rented our house and made one downstairs room into a storage room for a lot of our stuff. It never completely reverted back into a real room and it was still a storage room when we had house sitters while we were in Thailand earlier this year.



But the son of a good friend and colleague from Beijing will be visiting us for a month beginning Wednesday. Thursday both our daughter and son will arrive, one for two weeks and one for the weekend. We have some birthdays on Friday. And a week later my college roommate and his wife will stop by for two days before they cruise back home. All good fun. So the long slow rehabilitation of that downstairs room has been speeded up.



At this point, I could just put all the miscellaneous stuff into boxes and sort them out later, but we've been postponing the inevitable too long. My mother's garage is a model of what I don't want to do. So I've been going through stuff that's accumulated and putting things where they belong, in the trash, or in a donate box.

Eventually I want to clear the room out completely and make it into more usable space, but for now it will hold a mattress on the floor for the weekend. And maybe while the kids are here, they will find some things that they are now ready to take, trash, or give away.

More Thoughts on Alaskan Bloggers' Impacts

Since I wrote about this hastily last week in response to Erik Boehlert's post on the contribution of Alaskan bloggers, I've had more time to think about it.

It seems I left out the biggest contribution of the so-called progressive blogs.

Bloggers have given Alaska liberals a media presence, a sense of identity and of political efficacy. The blogs have become a place where local Alaskans can see a more progressive view of the world than has been available from any other regular public source, ever. The Anchorage Democratic caucus that brought together masses of Alaskans to vote for Obama in February 2008 was a physical event that energized Alaskan liberals like nothing we'd ever seen. The energy and spirit of hope there took everyone by surprise. People looked around and said, "I didn't know there were so many of us."

The blogs documented that event faster, more thoroughly, and more graphically than other media did and kept that spirit going. Every day the blogs posted critical progressive interpretations of local Alaska events. For years 'liberal' was an Alaskan epithet and it seemed that liberals needed to be added to the the anti-discrimination ordinance. When the red/blue state concept emerged, no one had any doubt what color Alaska was. Having places to go to find like-minded thinkers, to get documentation for what one suspected, to learn about events of interest was an awakening for liberals in Alaska. And people who didn't identify themselves as liberals could find blogs that debunked the myth that all liberals had horns. (They could find a few horned liberal blogs too.)

I doubt we'll ever find out if Palin really was spooked out of office by bloggers or whether she just thought that we were a believable scapegoat. There may be some truth, though, what some have said about no local politician being so closely fact-checked by watchdogs.

But my response is that this sort of scrutiny should be applied to all politicians. Certainly the conservatives had mastered the art of coordinated spin with their daily talking points with which to go after national Democrats - but that was different. The talking points came from the Republican Party and were repeated in various media from newspapers to talk shows to tv news. At their most blatant they took some fact out of context and made up false and maligning stories - swift boats, palling with terrorists - to create non-existent scandals. No wonder some Republican critics of Alaskan bloggers assumed the bloggers were fed from the White House.

But the Alaska bloggers I know are a loose group of independents who occasionally share ideas with each other to see if others know something they are looking for
Basically they use the internet or personal contacts to fact check and analyze the public announcements of the Palin administration and other Alaskan issues. Sometimes they cover events live. If Palin's speeches and press releases hadn't been so full of holes, the bloggers wouldn't have been nearly so busy.

And there are no deep-pocketed tax-exempt think-tanks sending money to support Alaskan bloggers. From what I can tell, the Alaskan bloggers have done whatever it is they've done, on their own time and dime. Though some have successfully explored an alternative to salaried journalism. They've found that through Pay-Pal they can raise some needed cash, from their readers, to cover unusual costs of their blogging addiction. Linda's paid her public records request bill this way and Dennis got some of his transportation to rural Alaska paid for this way. But no one's making a living of this.


Bias Charges Probably Have Some Merit

But there is something in the Palin supporters' charges about how she was treated differently than a man would be. I think male officials do generally get more respect than female officials. Men look like the definition of American success. They can buy a few sets of the same suit, a few blue and a few white shirts, and basic striped ties, and they are set. You could take a homeless guy with a 'work for food' sign off the corner, clean him up, put him in a dress-for-success suit, get him to stand up straight, and people would treat him with respect. Because he would look like the image of American success - the model set by every president we've ever had.

Women officials always get comments on what they wear. And what their hair looks like. Always. They can't buy ten of the same dress or suit. They have to change their look every day.

So people like Gov. Sanford or Sen. John Ensign or Sen. Ted Stevens just have to look the look and not say anything obviously stupid and they get a pass. There was very, very little official media scrutiny of Stevens until they found out the FBI was on his case. He was a US Senator in a suit. (He also knew his facts and how to put sentences together. No reporter had nearly the knowledge of Stevens on issues nor the access to information that might raise questions. And he had a temper. All that made it much harder to challenge anything he did.) But right off the bat, a man (especially if he's white) wearing a power suit gets respect from people in authority and from people in general. It's sad, but true.


A woman walks on the stage or into the studio and she's already 'marked,' Deborah Tannen's term, as different from the norm. She can't be invisible in a dark pinstriped suit - because even if she wears one, she's a woman in men's clothing. And if she wears a dress she's not in the standard, invisible cloak of success. We see her legs and red shoes. Alaskan bloggers played this game too.

Even if the commentators like what she's wearing or how she does her hair, the fact that they mention it trivializes her already. They're talking about what she looks like, not about what she's thinking. (Sure, men's looks get commented on too, but only when they stray from the norm. So Edwards' $400 haircut got press because men aren't supposed to be so vain about their looks, the way we expect women to be.)

So, on that point, the criticisms of Palin being treated differently because she's a woman have merit. (But to be fair, she also contributed to the attention every time she opened her mouth.) But the answer isn't to back off on her.

Instead male politicians should all have a swarm of bloggers parsing their speeches and press releases to see if they make sense. (See this example of Leonard Pitts parsing Mitt Romney's words, which - because it's so unusual - also suggests men's empty words generally get less scrutiny than Palin's.) They should have the public record regularly scrutinized to find discrepancies between what they say and what they do. They should all have people checking and posting the connections between their earmarks and their campaign financing, and asking questions about their first class travel and speaking fees from people with public policy issues the official is deciding.

With bloggers posting more of this information I suspect a lot more sham public servants - not just those who shoot themselves in the foot on some non-policy issue by flying off to Argentina to see their soul mates -will find that incumbency loses its some of its glow.

So, in addition to giving Alaskan liberals a media presence, a sense of identity and of political efficacy, maybe Alaskan bloggers will give other bloggers a model of how to track their local politicians.

Trojan War Reenactment in Garden

[We got our first, much needed, July rain last night!]

Phil continues to embarrasses me with beautiful pictures of all his flower beds (though I know that Judy has a major role in their success). And now Linda has a post of her vegie cage and other garden delights.

My gardening bible is called no work garden. Our lot has a natural mini-woods and then I discovered the joy of perennials. (They come back up year after year.) And we don't have much sun. So aside from the rock garden out front, I follow the book title pretty faithfully.

So I have to show close ups of my flowers to compensate for the lack of profusion.

Until I did a little research for this post, I didn't realize that I was reliving the Trojan wars in my garden. First there's the Achilles flower.

Killerplants.com explains why this plant is named after Achilles, quoting from The Illiad:

"There is no more hope for the Greeks. They will fall among the ships....But save me. Take me to the ship, cut this arrow out of my leg, wash the blood from it...and put the right things on it—the plants they say you have learned about from Achilles who learned about them from Cheiron, the best of the Centaurs....

"...Patroclus took a knife and cut the sharp arrowhead from his leg and washed the black blood away....Then he crushed a bitter root...and put it on the wound. The root took away all the pain. The blood stopped and the wound dried." (Homer, The Iliad, xi, 800 BCE, trans. I.A. Richards).

A common name today is Yarrow, which killerplants (strange name for a site that has healing plants) says is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word through Old High German and Old English words for healer.

Then there is the Trolius.


Wikipedia tells us that

In classical Greek mythology, Troilus is a young Trojan prince, one of the sons of King Priam (or sometimes Apollo) and Hecuba. Prophecies link Troilus' fate to that of Troy and so he is ambushed and murdered by Achilles. Sophocles was one of the writers to tell this tale. It was also a popular theme among artists of the time. Ancient writers treated Troilus as the epitome of a dead child mourned by his parents. He was also regarded as a paragon of youthful male beauty.

The Lady's Mantle, while more gentle sounding, also is related to wounds and blood.

From Garden Guides we learn that

The [Lady's Mantle] root is edible, as are the leaves, which sheep and cattle are said to relish. The entire plant is normally harvested in midsummer and can be used medicinally for bruises and wound healing. Lady's Mantle tea is said to be helpful for excessive menstruation.

The flower expert tells us

The origin of the word Daisy is Anglo Saxon “daes eage” literally meaning “day’s eye”. It was called this because daisies open at dawn as the day is just beginning. . .

A Daisy is made up of two types of flowers - disk florets and petal-like white ray florets. The Disk florets are at the center and the ray florets are at the periphery. But these are arranged to give the impression of being a single flower. This arrangement on Daisies is a type of inflorescence known as a capitulum.





And this blue bee magnet's name eludes me. Burnet comes to mind but I can't find anything that confirms that. There is a book called The Land of the Blue Flower by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It begins:

The Land of the Blue Flower was not called by that name until the tall, strong, beautiful King Amor came down from his castle on the mountain crag and began to reign. Before that time it was called King Mordreth’s Land, and as the first King Mordreth had been a fierce and cruel king this seemed a gloomy name.

This doesn't entice me to read more, but you can read it all at the link above. And if you know the flower, please send me the name. [A friend I consulted who knows these things says it's Campanula rotundifolia[glomerata].]


Finally, from a Lake Country Point of View we learn something about the name of Veronica spicata - or Spiked Speedwell.

"Spicata" means spiked - so that's straight forward enough. But "Veronica" is a different story altogether. "Veronica" comes from the Latin Vero Icone , or true image, and is associated with Saint Veronica.

According to the Acta Sanctorum published by the Bollandists, Berenice was a pious woman of Jerusalem, who was moved with pity as Jesus carried his cross to Golgotha. She gave Jesus her kerchief that he might wipe this forehead and Jesus accepted the offering. After using it, he handed it back to her, creating the image of His face miraculously impressed upon it. After this, Berenice became Saint Veronica.

I recall we've discussed icons here not long ago, in a very different context.

Midnight Soapscum Climaxes with Year 2 Episode 5

Everything worked tonight as all the loose plot ends were tied up and lots of people and even an alien got married in the final scene. (There were so many loose plot ends, I could have missed a few. It was only tonight, my third of this year's five episodes, that I noticed a major historical juxtaposition - Obama is already the president in the runup to the 2008 election. Poetic license I guess. Too good a character to leave out just because he hadn't yet been elected.) The cast had as good a time as the audience which whooped it up every now and then. I'll just post some pictures and let you make up your own story. It can't be as bizarre as the one at Out North. (Can you spot Caribou Barbie and Todd, and Obama?) I suspect this five week production will be remembered in Anchorage theater history. A lot of outstanding - much of it young - local talent got to do some way out stuff. Five different episodes - same characters mostly - in five weeks. But you could tell that the cast and crew had bonded early on and I think a lot of future theater greats in Anchorage (and beyond) will be connected forever because they 'worked' together in this production. There were no duds in the cast and most played their roles so well, I can't imagine them as anyone else. Mama Rose Mary is only 18 years old and was the narrator whose huge presence pulled everything - including the audience - together. Tonight she even sang as part of the play. I didn't get a program again tonight and I'm not sure I can find the one from Episode 3. But this is an actor we're going to hear more about. And you can catch a bit of her persona in the bit of video at the bottom.











(It's only 30 seconds.)

Click for posts on previous episodes and other soapscummy things.

What Do I Know? 3rd Anniversary and I Missed It

I knew the anniversary was this month, but I didn't look until just now. The first post was July 9, 2006 - on Spittle Bugs. The second post was two days later - on using Turn Indicators. That was it - two posts for July.

August 6 was on going digital as I got my first digital camera and posted my first picture - a bull moose at Kincaid. There were only seven posts in August, but I think that regulars can already see in those original posts hints of what has come since.

It was a while before I discovered counters and installed sitemeter. I noted with a post when I had visitor 1500. I was reminded of that when I recently had a couple people get here googling "The number 1500." (Does anyone know why they were googling that?) I looked to see what they got. It was May 6, 2007. Ten months.

So I decided to have a contest to reward visitor number 10,000. That took until December 20, 2007 - seven more months. Things were speeding up. And now, probably around the time of the 3rd Anniversary ten days ago, we got to 100,000.

That's pretty modest compared to other blogs, but it's plenty for me. I was going to have another contest, but kept putting it off. I also decided that in the spirit of doing things a little differently, I would not pick a number that ends in lots of zeroes this time. But 99,999 passed before I noticed. Then I thought of 111,111, but that passed by too.

So let's go for 123,456. I'll come up with a prize for the identified visitor closest to that number. I'll post warnings to pay attention when we get closer. While sitemeter gives us lots of data on each visitor, it doesn't give names, or email addresses. (Though I did get a file name last week as the "Entry Page" and it included the person's name. I found three people with that name and emailed one to warn him he was sending his name out. But I suppose I would have assumed such an email was spam. Maybe I'll try again.) So visitors will have to claim their prize. I'll check their claim against the sitemeter profile for the closest claim to 123,456.

Skeletons on the Zahara

It's been taking me a long time to finish books lately, and I've got three or four started. But I got invited to a book club and I had three days to find and read Skeletons of the Zahara, by Dean King. It's one of those unexpected adventure tales - a US commercial ship wrecks off the coast of Africa and everyone gets captured and enslaved. The author had found the original account - a best seller in the early 1800s, mentioned as a favorite by Abraham Lincoln - while researching something else. He's taken that account and the account of a second survivor and tried to mesh the two tales together.

The ship The Commerce set sail May 2, 1815 with 11 men and after stops in New Orleans and Gibralter (where a 12th hitched a ride) wrecked on the coast of North Africa on August 28. After a brief time on shore, they escaped capture by swimming back out to the grounded ship and continued in one of the ships longboats in hopes of being rescued by a passing ship. Instead they beached 200 miles south sometime between September 5 and 7. The men who survived with Captain Riley made it to safety of the Amerian Consul in Swearah on November 7, 1815. They'd been captives for two months. Four of the men left for Gibralter on January 4, 1816. Captain Riley followed sometime later and made it to New York City on March 19, 1816.

I thought maybe it was just me, but others in the group although thought the writing was pretty uninspired and it took everyone a while to get into the story. We know from the start that the captain, who wrote this, survives, since we have the book. But eventually you want to know how.

I don't think I ever considered that American sailors were taken as slaves by Arabic speakers in Africa. Their lives were pretty basic on the camel treks through the desert, but so were the lives of their new masters. I learned that you CAN survive on salt water if you mix it with fresh water; human urine is better than dying of thirst, and you can drink liquid stored inside a camel.

They placed the small intestines, with their contents still inside, in the kettle, along with the liver and lungs. One man slit open the camel's rumen - its first and largest stomach, where it partly digests its food before regurgitating it as cud - reached inside with a bowl, and scooped out some of the chunky green liquid. . .

Riley saw a teenage boy plunge his head into the camel's gaping rumen and drink. Hamet [the captor], seeing Riley's [the captured captain] interest, told him to remove the boy and take his place.

Riley scooped the nauseating cavity with a bowl and poured the ropy green fluid down his throat. What he swallowed could not have been more refreshing . . . [pp. 152-3]

That they survived was a combination of sheer luck, wit, and determination. The captain strove hard to have as many of his men saved as possible and talked his master into taking all four of the crew still with him, rather than save his own life without them. It appears that this loyalty to his men, in fact, impressed the master who eventually arranged to get him to an American consul in exchange for a sizeable ransom.

And while this characterization is based on what the Captain himself wrote, there was confirmation in the other account, written by a survivor who was separated from the captain's group and stayed captive an extra year. Furthermore, the captain also gave accounts where his behavior was not laudable - as when he escaped the first encounter with Africans by leaving the older, Gibraltar hitchhiker on the beach in his place. He rationalized that the man was not as critical to the survival of the rest as he himself.

The captain also had an ability to see the world through the eyes of others which I think also helped in their survival. You can see it in this passage where they were taunted by a black African slave. The slave, Boireck, had worked all day and came back to find the emaciated Americans, who had rested the day, in a tent. He tried to chase them out, but the master said no.

That evening [Boirek] amused the family and some visitors by taunting the Christians. He pointed at their slack genitals and laughingly compared them with his own. His sneering references to the gaunt Riley as "el rais" [the captain] brought howls of laughter. He poked their wounds with a sharp stick and made fun of their skin, which died and turned foul beneath the very image of Allah, the sun. What further proof was needed that these miserable white heathens were worthy only of slavery and scorn?

Clark fumed. "It's bad enough to be stripped, skinned alive, and mangled," he whispered to Riley, "without being obliged to bear the scoffs of a damned negro slave."

"It's good to know you're still alive, Jim, " Riley responded with a nod. The [camel] milk and water they had consumed that day, the rest, the shade had boosted his spirits. He would not let Boireck's buffoonery beat him down just now. "You feel the need to revenge an insult, but let the poor negro laugh if he can take pleasure in it," he told Clark. "God knows there's little enough here to provide that. He's only trying to gain favor with his masters and mistresses. I'm willing he should have it, even at our expense."[p. 136]

While author King only has Riley's word for what happened, the fact that he could even think like this - even if he didn't really say it - says a lot for him.

Of the seven who made it back from Africa, two died within seven years of their return at ages 29 and 44. Another died in 1831 at age 36. Captain Riley made it to age 62 dying at sea in 1840. Another died in 1847 at age 63. The other sailor to write an account of the trip upon which the book is based, Robbins, died in 1860 at 69. The youngest crew member who was only 15 when The Commerce set sail, died in 1882 at age 82. So, while the near starvation and severe physical strain affected them all, a couple still managed to live to a reasonable old age.

Bikes versus Buses

Cut outs for buses at bus stops are good. It means the bus can stop and pick up/drop off passengers without blocking traffic. But at some points, like the southwest corner of Lake Otis and 36th, the cutout meant that the sidewalk/bikepath was cut down to about 3 feet wide. That may sound like a lot, but if someone was waiting for the bus there, a bike rider pretty much had to go out into the street, unless the bus waiters moved down to the wider part of the path. And there have been times when the bush - which is visually much nicer than just the chain link fence - wasn't trimmed back, that you had to push against the bush or go into the street.



They are working on the sidewalk here. Although I live nearby, I don't recall any notices. It would be nice if they gave local folks a chance to give some input in case there are a good ideas about the improvement that could be incorporated for little or no extra cost.

But the good news is that, according to one of the workers I talked to, when they finish the path, the narrowest part will be 60 inches. That would be a significant improvement. I'm not sure how they will do that. We'll see it when it's finished. They've been at it for almost two weeks already.